Phantasmagoria
by Siena1
Summary: As Syd runs from the CIA and fights flashbacks of the past two years, she turns to the only person who understands her turmoil. S/S, and slightly spoilerish for season 3!
1. Wake Me Up

A/N: This is my first fic, so please tell me what you think!

Wake me up inside

Call my name and 

Save me from the dark

Bid my blood to run

Before I come undone 

Save me from the nothing I've become.

- "Bring Me to Life," Evanescence

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Despite the biting wind against her cheek, Freelancer didn't blink an eye. Dressed in black and focused entirely on the scene below, she blended in with the dark shadows and numbed silence pervading the compound's rooftop. With elbows propped against roof's icy ledge, she kept the crosshairs trained on the silhouette below. 6'1" male. 185 pounds. Probably African-American, though difficult to tell through the darkness. Her orders had not included a description, merely a time and place. 

Waiting until the target left the cover of the vehicle, Freelancer moved for the first time in over an hour. A single squeeze of her finger betrayed her stillness, and sent a jolt recoiling through her shoulder from the rifle…

…and Sydney violently jerked awake, almost overturning the cot under her. As she tried to catch her racing breath, she shivered in the coldness around her. Growing calmer by the second, becoming more aware of her surroundings, she couldn't shake off a sense of bone-deep numbness left by the nightmare. She could still feel the ice beneath her arms, the cold steel through her gloved hands.

But then again, her new accommodations at the CIA didn't exactly evoke warm feelings. Sydney knew from visiting her mother in CIA confinement that the gray, spartan room lacked any accommodating warmth. But, as she swung her bare feet off the cot and onto the carpetless floor, she hadn't realized how raw the air felt until she was on the other side of the glass.

When they had first dragged her pass the security gate, Sydney had immediately guessed the destination of her rough-handling guides, and began to struggle for all her worth. When it only took three guards to shove her into the cell, she knew her emaciated state from the coma in Hong Kong had left her more weakened than she had guessed. Collapsing on her cot after four hours of pacing through the room had confirmed her suspicions. After going hoarse with demands to speak to her father, Sydney had finally tried to sleep and shut off all the thoughts tumbling through her head.

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Vaughn stumbling through an explanation. Me stumbling from the room. Ushered on a plane ride home, the dark abyss of the ocean below echoing the emptiness spreading through me. Avoiding his touch, his stare, by drawing further inside of myself. Drawn with the current, against my will, to a life I can no longer live. 

Her tormented thoughts had melted into the clarity of her nightmare—the cold clarity of being inside the head of a numbed killer. It didn't help that she awoke from that nightmare to find herself in her mother's cell, accused of her mother's crime. Indeed, though the accusation of treason had not been verbally leveled at Sydney, she had read it in Vaughn's disbelieving eyes, in the rough hands that forced her behind glass.

Her throat still scratched from hoarse demands for her father interspersed with claims of innocence. Now, she merely paced silently, walking off the after-affects of the nightmare, looking down at the floor. Waiting. Waiting to remember, waiting to die, waiting for the quiet footfalls coming down the hall, up the glass wall, stopping in front of her.

As she looked up into his cold blue eyes, she was caught for a moment by the emptiness behind them. For a breath's instant, she got lost in eyes that reflected the turmoil numbing her entire body. Before that turmoil threatened to bubble over, Sydney cut the silence with his name, shattering the stillness.

'Sark."


	2. Letting Go

A/N: Thank you for all the wonderful reviews! I'm glad you like this idea of mine that wouldn't leave me alone. I'm still figuring out how fanfiction.net works, though, and I can't seem to enable this story to accept reviews from anonymous members. Anyone know what I'm doing wrong? Advice and constructive criticism are welcome. Also, make up your own song lyrics to go with this one…

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The sight of Sydney behind the glass wall almost stopped Sark in his tracks. For one dizzying moment, Sark thought Irina paced the length of the cell. A new leanness to her frame and longer hair made it easy for Sark to mistake the cell's occupant for his previous employer. But when she tore her eyes from the ground meet his own, Sark experienced the leveling impact of a stare that he hadn't felt in two years. This was undeniably Sydney, but a Sydney transformed.

He saw pain and anger flicker through her gaze, along with an emptiness that threatened to swallow all emotion. Caught unawares, Sark knew he let some of his own smoldering anger seep into his eyes. But his blank façade snapped back into place as he waited. As in all situations when dealing with an adversary on an equal playing ground, Sark preferred to wait and let his enemy make the first move. Sydney didn't disappoint.

"Sark." She somehow managed to infuse his name with disdain smacking of the old Sydney. Sark suppressed the boyish urge to roll his eyes. Perhaps his initial surmise of her change was exaggerated. Her next remark seemed proof enough.

"Has hell frozen over, or are you on the wrong side of this glass?" she bit out.

Now he fought back a smirk. Some things don't change. 

"I know our role reversal must be an unwelcome discovery, Miss Bristow, but I can assure you I've spent a few uncomfortable hours where you're standing. Since my capture in Stockholm, a continued cooperation with the CIA has led to a more comfortable life in confinement, though."

He felt more than saw her look him up and down in his tailored suit. Tingling with something more than annoyance, he continued on. "With my help, a few uncomfortable hours is all you need spend in that cell." 

"How," Sydney impatiently said, "do you plan to my stay here more comfortable?" As her eyes flashed with the heat of their exchange, Sark couldn't stop himself from thinking of a few ways to make her stay comfortable. More than comfortable. 

He silently cursed his wayward thoughts as Sydney's eyes widened and she faltered backward. She must have glimpsed the turmoil building up inside of him. Time was running out, and he needed her to listen now. Stalking up to the glass between them, Sark pinned her with a glance and began. 

"We don't have much time. The CIA is not recording audio of this conversation as a condition of my agreeing to be here. Rarely do they drag me from my confinement and trot me around, but your handler has tucked tail and run, leaving the CIA no choice but to use me, the person most familiar with your methods and strategies." 

He could tell Sydney was about to ask about her father, but he cut her off. "I'm supposed to inform you of circumstances, but those can wait. All you need know now is that CIA does not believe your explanation for the past two years and plans to execute you as a traitor as soon as they've extracted all possible information from you." 

"What proof could they to contradict my explanation?" she countered, but Sark could read the conflicting betrayal evident in her stance. He watched her mentally evaluating her treatment up to this point, and all the protocol pointed towards their assumption of her guilt. Armed guards. High security confinement. No initial debrief. 

Sark could pinpoint the exact moment Sydney stopped hoping. From the downward angle of her shoulders, he could see she'd let go of the idealistic view of the CIA she had clung to beyond reason. She'd stopped hoping this was all some nightmare. She'd stopped hoping she could go back to her old life. 

When Sydney looked up, gone was the anger and betray; her visage was as blank as Sark's own. Sark refused to examine why this made him feel a sense of loss. 

"What now?" she said in a voice devoid of all emotion. 

All Sark could do what cock his eyebrow before darkness descended and hid his face from Sydney. He could hear far away shouts, indicating that the power failure had shut off all the lights in the rest of the building. Only once the dull hum of the back-up generator also shut off did Sark move. Quickly reaching for the cell's door, he easily pulled open the barrier that had only moments before been electromagnetically sealed. 

Striding through the door, he braced for that inevitable foot or fist that Sydney would throw his way. A punch in the stomach answered his question concerning her location in the dark. Grabbing her arm, he twisted it behind her back and swung her over to the glass wall, trapping her body with his. 

"Sydney, stop! I'm getting you out of here!" Sark hissed in her ear over her shoulder. She stopped struggling, but he could feel every muscle in her body tense against his. "If we work together to get out of here, we may both live to see the light of day." If anything, she grew even tenser at his words, hesitancy evident in every line of her body. "There's nothing left for you at the CIA. They've already labeled you a traitor. Why stay and die?" 

He could hear her ragged breathing calm down as her body relaxed against the length of his. Sark couldn't help his own erratic breathing as an unwelcome awareness of every place they touched flooded his senses. Dragging his thoughts, and his body, away from her, he grabbed her arm and fled out the cell door.

Sark wasn't expecting to almost trip over something in the dark, but neither was he surprised to find it was an unconscious guard. In response to Sydney's silence inquiry about the body, Sark responded aloud, "Never underestimate your mother." 

"Sydney..." a familiar voice said through in the darkness.

Speak of the devil. 


End file.
